


Not the Homecoming You Hoped For

by danceswithhamsters01



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Abominations (Dragon Age), Child Death, Death, Demons, Dragon Age: Origins Quest - Broken Circle, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithhamsters01/pseuds/danceswithhamsters01
Summary: Based on a prompt from r/dragonageWarden Amell has arrived at the Circle of Magi to find that Knight-Commander Greagoir and his Templars have failed in their duty. Demons and abominations have run amuck in the tower. Along the way, she recognizes someone special among the fallen.





	Not the Homecoming You Hoped For

****Prompt 2**** : Mage Warden: Walking through the abomination infested halls of Kinloch Hold and come upon the body of someone your warden mage knows quite well.

 

“ _We saw only demons, hunting templars and mages alike. I realized we could not defeat them and told my men to flee.”_

 

“ _These are not the mages that you remember. They are abominations. To save their souls, you must harden your heart.”_

 

“ _...once you cross that threshold, there is no turning back. The great doors must remain barred...”_

 

“ _If Irving has fallen, then the Circle is lost and must be destroyed.”_

 

Knight-Commander Greagoir’s words played over in her mind as the massive barrier doors slammed shut behind her group. She paused a moment, both to fight off the tears of anger threatening to blur her vision and to gather her wits. Only the fact that he’d saved her life twice as an apprentice had prevented her from lashing out at him, either with magic or simply throwing herself at him in an attempt to claw his eyes out. That, and Sten laying a rather strong hand on her shoulder. Unbridled rage, no matter how seductive, would not be any help, especially with the chaos the Circle’s home now found itself suffering. Demons roaming the halls meant she had to guard not only her mind but also her body. This was worse than any nightmare.

 

She spared a brief glance at her party, trying her best to look more calm and certain than she felt. The qunari calling himself Sten remained impassive, unreadable. Zevran, the elf, merely met her gaze and nodded. He, too, seemed to have his emotions under lock and key. His face was as cool and determined as it had been when they’d first met during his failed ambush not so long ago. Only Alistair seemed to be giving any outlet to the nervous energy he felt, hand gripping the hilt of his sword tightly, eyes scanning the area, on high alert for whatever would make itself known to them first. Maker willing, their minds would be as strong as their bodies, or else the demons would have even more playthings.

 

Sevarra hadn’t even walked twenty paces into the main hall before she happened upon the first of what would be many, many casualties. A templar lay crumpled on the stone floor in a pool of his own blood, holes ripped into his breastplate by something savage and unnaturally strong. She knew without having to reach out with her magic-sensing that the man was beyond any help she could offer. His heart had been quite literally ripped out of his chest. She exchanged pained glances with Alistair. Whatever could take down a fully trained templar like that wasn’t something they’d want to tangle with, but they would undoubtedly find it sooner or later.

 

The mage took a breath and pushed open the door to the boys’ dormitory. Her heart sank at the scene that greeted her. Bed frames had been tossed around as if they were nothing more than mere sticks, instead of the solid heavy oak they’d been made from. Feathers covered the floor, as if the mattresses and pillows had bled out white and brown down and feathers instead of blood like their former occupants who now laid in various unnatural positions on the cold stone floor.

 

 _Jevis, Rolof, Matteo, Dmitri…_ She recognized the dead in the room, knuckles going white as she gripped her staff. She held out the faintest threads of hope. There was no sign of Taris among them. Perhaps the young elf was hiding somewhere, still alive?

 

Shaking her head, she trotted out of the room and back to the hallway, picking her way toward the girls’ dormitory. More dead templars lay on the floor, along with the body of… Enchanter Eileen? She stopped and knelt beside the plump mage’s lifeless body. She frowned, brushing one of the woman’s snowy curls out from in front of her eyes. A sniffle escaped the Warden. She gently ran a hand over the dead mage’s face, closing her unblinking lifeless eyes. Eileen, who’d first introduced her to poetry; Eileen, who’d never had an unkind word for anyone; Eileen, who’d helped her discover the pleasures of the written word was... gone. She had not been a young woman but death had seemed at least decades away from coming to take her to the Maker’s side.

 

Her fellow Warden gave her a questioning glance.

 

“She is… was… one of my teachers.”

 

Eileen’s robes were ripped and bloodied, with a few scorch marks here and there; her staff lay scattered in pieces nearby. Her fingertips were burnt, a risk mages ran when using too many lightning spells in too small a time span. Sevarra recalled the many times First Enchanter Irving had cautioned her to pace herself with storm spells, lest she harm herself. The Enchanter had probably spent her last moments trying to defend the apprentices, the cost to herself be damned. The faint aroma of ozone and char hung in the air. The enchanter had not gone out quietly, that much was certain.

 

As she rose back to her feet, the Warden mage found a Canticle repeating itself in her mind:

_Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter._

_Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just._

 

The girls’ quarters proved to be no less heart-wrenching a scene than the boys’ quarters had been. Lianra, Reshelle, Bonnie, and Zoe lay dead in a corner, terror etched on their faces. Several feet away from them, the charred husk of some sort of twisted nightmarish creature sat, still smoking. An abomination, perhaps? At least they’d taken one of the monsters out with them, from the look of things. A quick search of the room found no further clues or anything of use. She swallowed hard as she left the room in which she’d slept every night of her childhood and adolescence.

 

The sight of survivors took Sevarra by surprise when her group waded their way into the salon that sat just before the main library. Four children, two apprentices, a Harrowed mage, and a senior enchanter, from the look of things. Before she could call out to them, the door to the library shimmered as something crossed the magical barrier covering it. Her heart leaped into her throat… _a rage demon!_ She remembered the creatures that looked as if they were living lava from her Harrowing. The creature only managed to ooze perhaps two paces from the door before the senior enchanter unleashed a flurry of ice magic upon it, annihilating it.

 

Surprise was written in the senior enchanter’s face after she turned to face the group, eyes lighting with recognition as they fell upon Sevarra. “You? You’ve returned to the tower? Why did the templars let you through? Are you here to warn us?”

 

_Wynne? Wynne had survived Ostagar? She’d made it back home to the Circle?_

 

If it weren’t for the fact that she was doing her utmost to refrain from either bursting into tears or giving in to the anger that was boiling in the pit of her stomach, the young Warden would’ve been proud of herself for keeping up her facade of composure. A hurricane raged behind the dispassionate features of her face. With as much speed as her tongue could manage, she relayed the fact that the templars were merely waiting for reinforcements to arrive; the Knight-Commander had called for the Right of Annulment.

 

She wanted to rage at the elder mage for looking crestfallen. Where was her fire, where was her spine? Why wasn’t she angry at the failure of Greagoir and his templars to do their duty and hunt down the abominations? Alara wouldn’t have looked like a kicked pup. Irving would’ve taken matters into his own hands and taught them why mages were to be feared and respected. The younger mage held her tongue; the quiet weeping of an elven girl huddling against Petra’s leg had brought her back to reality. Wynne and Petra were probably all that stood between these survivors and whatever else lurked beyond that barrier. It wasn’t so easy to give in to anger when you had to watch over little ones who couldn’t protect themselves.

 

“Did Irving survive?” She was unable to mask the worry she had for her old mentor.

 

“If anyone could survive this, it would be your old master. It was he who told me to look after the children. It’s a long story,” the elder replied.

 

One question answered. The young Warden felt a bit like an ass for being angry at Wynne for merely doing what she’d been ordered.

 

“Who exactly is Irving?” the more senior Warden asked.

 

“The First Enchanter,” one of the apprentices answered.

 

Sevarra ignored the look Alistair shot her way, his eyebrows possibly having migrated into his hair. There would be time for questions about less important things later. If they survived. Trying to save the mages and templars who’d been locked into a hell-hole by the Knight-Commander seemed more important than letting her companion know that she’d been apprenticed to the Circle’s own leader.

 

“The only way the Knight-Commander will back down is if he hears and sees the First Enchanter for himself, alive and not… not...” _Made into one of those things, an abomination._ She couldn’t finish the sentence. The thought of Irving dead or worse made her heart squeeze painfully.

 

“Then our path is laid out before us,” the senior enchanter said simply.

 

They agreed to combine forces, Wynne would accompany them, while Petra would stay and watch over the survivors. Maker willing, they’d find some souls who were lucky enough to have found a place to hide or strong enough to fend off the monsters sieging the tower.

 

The Warden braced herself as the barrier came down. Thinking like prey would make _her_ prey. No, she needed to think like something bigger and stronger than a mere human, something that was every bit as dangerous as the abominations that were now lumbering toward them from the library. _A bear would never forgive such an assault on its den. Be like a bear,_ she thought.

 

She ignored the dead bodies on the floor, templars in plate armor that’d been sickeningly crunched and twisted. There would be time to identify and mourn later. At that moment, she needed to make the hunters become the hunted.


End file.
